He’s walking away from her now, no doubt a hand to his face. She can’t help but feel pride for having touched what she believes to be the cloth of his fold at the tips of her gloved fingers when she slapped him. Even now, having done something she would never have dreamed herself capable of doing seventeen years ago, even now she thinks, Good. He’s wearing his fold.

“Wow,” Tom says. And he’s about to say a lot more. She can tell. She can hear it in the three letters, as if they comprise a picked lock, the door now open to everything.

“Wait,” Olympia says. “Hang on. This is crazy. Mom, you need to calm down. We’re okay. This is good. We’re on a train. We’re heading to see your parents. We’re—”

Then it comes, Tom’s rage, but in an unexpected form. Malorie anticipates a rash of words. She even braces herself for a return strike. But no, the door to their cabin slides open, then closes, and Tom’s angry steps thunder up the hall.

“No,” she says, imagining a box in storage opened, the lid slid aside, something terrible sitting up. She makes for the door, and Olympia holds her and talks to her, says things like Mom come on, he needs a minute, Mom it’s okay, Mom don’t go out there angry, Mom let him be, Mom it’s Tom, remember Tom? Your own son?

Remember Tom?

Mom?

And Malorie does. Or close. She remembers Tom the man, her son’s namesake, instead.

The incredible man enters her mind’s eye with startling detail, and she’s momentarily embarrassed he witnessed her striking her son.

Tom, she thinks, I’m sorry.

But does she say it to the man or to the son? She’s crying now, in Olympia’s arms, behind her fold, crying at the echo of Tom the man’s scream to be let into the attic where Malorie is in labor. As the creatures Gary convinced Don to let inside walk the house below.

“It’s okay,” Olympia says. “We’re gonna get there safe. We’re gonna—”

“No,” Malorie says. “We’re not. Not this time. We pushed our luck. We shouldn’t have left. We had it good. We survived the house. The school. We had it good and I got greedy. I saw the names of my parents and I lost my mind. I got lazy, Olympia. I got lazy.”

Her voice cracks with the last of these words. Olympia makes to say something, but Malorie is already removing her daughter’s hands from her shoulders.

She feels pride for the gloves Olympia wears.

Even now.

Then she’s out the door, too. Off to find him. Tom, who, of all the people on this train, would be most excited about a caught creature in a box.

And the proof of progress such a horror would be.